


An Oblation

by Dancains



Category: Dracula (1931), Dracula - Bram Stoker
Genre: Blood Drinking, Character Study, M/M, Set during the movie, Some ableist language, Vampires, and some pseudo-sexual stuff?, blood drinking with dubious consent, but also just, or an attempt at one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 06:16:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12205518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dancains/pseuds/Dancains
Summary: Renfield was acutely aware that the beast in front of him--for it was not truly a man but a walking corpse--could hear every pulse of his beating heart, as if it were ticking like a grandfather clock. Along with the strange songs of wolves, it was a sort of music for him.{To protect Mina, if only for some time, Renfield offers himself up to Dracula in her stead.}





	An Oblation

**Author's Note:**

> Ob·la·tion, noun -
> 
> 1. a thing presented or offered to God or a god
> 
> 2\. the presentation of bread and wine to God in the Eucharist

"I'm warning you, Dr. Seward. If you don't send me away, you must answer for what will happen to Miss Mina!"

 His final declaration, an ominous though well-intentioned warning, echoed off the walls as Renfield was dragged unceremoniously from the office and thrown back into his room.

 He laid on his cot, unable to find even a moment of comfort; guilt and anguish weighed heavily on his mind. He knew his master would undoubtedly be displeased, and that he must do something to earn back his good graces. He tried not to imagine what that task might be. 

 The silence that permeated the room, along with the sensation of being left alone with his own frenzied thoughts, was nearly unbearable. 

 Renfield wasn't sure whether it had been hours or mere seconds before the peel of a wolf's howl in the distance disturbed him from his lamentations. 

 He sat up, suddenly, ram-rod straight, eyes unmoving from the room's sole window. He didn't need to be able to see out of it to know who stood on the well-manicured lawn below.

 "Yes, Master?"

 He crossed the room, peering down at the singular moonlit figure.

 "Master, you've come back!" Renfield exclaimed, trying to keep quiet, as he knew he should, but getting the better of himself. Despite his terror, excitement rang out in his voice.

 The count spoke to him silently. Renfield felt his heart drop to the pit of his stomach. 

"Oh, Master, please...please don't ask me to do that! Don't--not her!"

 He could feel his master's unmistakable desire for the doctor's daughter. Not only for the rich life that flowed through her veins--quite ripe for the taking--but for her. That lithe, sinuous form. Renfield's hand clenched tightly at his side, nails piercing the skin. 

 He could feel something--something almost akin to envy bubbling up in his gut, hot and sickening, followed by waves of disgust. How could he even dare entertain such a thought.

 "Please," Renfield clutched at the metal bars in front of him, desperate for something physical to anchor himself. His knuckles went white. "Please don't, Master. Don't, please."

 He could feel his whole body starting to shake; he nearly started sobbing as he had been only moments ago. A worry came over him that he might collapse.

"No...no...no!" he continued, surely in vain.

 In what he later considered a moment of weakness, a desperate last resort came to the forefront of his mind. He swallowed nervously. 

 "Drink from me, not her!"

 His words had been barely above a whisper but they seemed as if a shout in the eerie silence.

 Nothing in the count's expression betrayed any surprise, but Renfield could feel it just slightly, radiating from the monster of a man. In the stark stillness that surrounded them, they seemed to be the only two souls awake in the late night hour.

 "D-don't you want blood from a strong, young man?" he continued, "...not that sad, delicate thing, why, you'd only get a drop from her, I imagine! You can take so much more from me!" His last words were soft and pleading, "Please, Master."

 He prostrated himself, as if praying in a magnificent cathedral, instead of kneeling on the dingey stone floor of the sanitarium. 

 Renfield knew that Dracula abhored begging as much as he did mercy, but somehow the pathetic display interested him. The corner of his lip curled into a cruel sneer (the closest thing to an emotion on his face Renfield had seen since they had left transylvania,) as if to say, "how dare this man disobey me...bargain with me." 

 The lunatic's half-strung arguments continued on above him. Renfield was still blabbering on and Dracula suddenly wished he'd be quiet. He could hear the incessant, rambling pleas echoing in his own head. It had been many centuries since he had enslaved the mind of another, he had forgotten the toll it could take. 

 Renfield looked up from his shaking hands to see that the count was gone. Strange swirling mist was left floating across the dewy grass where he had been standing. He could hear the familiar sound of leathery wings. Only seconds passed before Dracula was in the room standing before him: a dark, oppressive figure looming over his servant. 

 Renfield gasped, but tried to quell his own shock. He knew the count needed an invitation to enter, and hadn't his pleas been more than invitation?

 The count spoke to him, again not in words but in feelings. "Get up," he seems to say. "Pick yourself up from the ground. You cower like a dog, yet you think yourself worthy of becoming like me, becoming deathless."

 Renfield raises his head, reverently, sad pale eyes gleaming in the slats of moonlight that poured in betwixt the bars of the window. His heavy breathing was the only thing in the room that could be heard by human ears. 

 He stood upright, not equal to Dracula in height but in posture, his spine suddenly straight and defiant. His trembling fingers clutched at his own heart but he willed them into stillness. Without breaking the gaze between those piercing blue eyes and his own, he pushed his braces from his shoulders, one after the other so they hung at his thighs. Following an unspoken command, his fingers went to his neck, and he slowly unbuttoned his linen shirt, one of the few measly possessions Seward had allowed him to keep. 

 He knew this wasn't going to be like the first time they had done this, when Renfield had been asleep--fainted. When he had awoken, his blood was in Dracula's veins and Dracula's thoughts were in his head. It was a conduit that seemed only to lull in the daytime hours, when the count drifted into an emptiness almost resembling sleep. It was during these hours that Renfield was the most lucid.

 Dracula observed him all the while, his expression betraying nothing, but Renfield could feel the hunger so strongly it made him feel parched, as if he hadn't just drank from the cracked pitcher in the corner of his cell. As if he hadn't drank in many years. 

 Renfield was acutely aware that the beast in front of him--for it was not truly a man but a walking corpse--could hear every pulse of his beating heart, as if it were ticking like a grandfather clock. Along with the strange songs of wolves, it was a sort of music for him.

 The count pushed forward, growing impatient. Renfield's shirt slipped to the floor as Dracula pushes him onto the narrow bed, descending upon him. 

 He was close--so close, and Renfield couldn't stand looking into those eyes, those terrible eyes. He felt hypnotized, both drowsy and hyper-aware all at once. He was cognizant of the breath on his neck and the goosebumps that ran down his exposed arms. He was frightened of what Dracula wanted to do to him, but almost more so by what he might want Dracula to do to him.

Where he expected a painful sharpness he instead felt a soft wet warmth, as Dracula licked the beading sweat from his neck. His tongue was an odd contrast from him body, which was cold like marble, serving almost as a relief in the oppressive heat of the room. Deceptively gentle fingers carded through Renfield's hair, mussing it out of place. He closes his eyes tightly and gave over to the sensation of it, though he didn't understand why Dracula was putting off the inevitable. 

 Is he savoring me, Renfield wondered morbidly, as one relishes in the scent of a very fine cut of meat? or the sight of one in the butcher's window? The thought almost makes one of his strange giggles burst from his mouth. Dracula clutched sharply at his side (possibly a sort of reprimand for his wandering thoughts,) causing him to groan and writhe. He threw back his head, baring his neck even further. Renfield knew there would be bruises across his chest when he eventually inspected himself in the morning light. 

 As Dracula drew a blunt nail down the length of is arm, he noticed that the vampire had an earthy smell, almost like herbs and dried flowers. He found it strange but not unpleasant, and mind turned to an absent thought about his flower garden, now left unattended at his old home. The beautiful flowers were no doubt withering. He screamed as sharp fangs abruptly bit into him.

 The tendon where his neck met his shoulder suddenly burned like fire. His whole body spasmed. It was an indescribable feeling--his life force being drawn out and consumed by another. Any barriers between their minds fell, and he was unsure which thoughts were his own. Incoherent flashes of animalistic urge pulsed through him. His ragged nails were sharp in Dracula's back, scratching with sympathetic need. 

 After what seemed like an eternity, the chaos dulled in nothingness--the pitch black of his own mind. He opened his eyes, not knowing that they had been closed, and found himself once again entirely alone. 

 He would have thought it a dream if it weren't for the two thin, watery lines of blood trickling down his bare chest. He tried to ignore the half-formed erection straining at his trousers, along with the quickness of his own breath.

 The next day, when Doctor Seward saw the twin punctures on his skin and the blood that has seeped into his bed-sheets, he assumed the wounds were somehow self-inflicted--another symptom of his morbid obsession, which was now clearly escalating. 

 Van Helsing watched them both with a knowing grimace; he was a man more observant and far wiser than Seward. As the attendants buckled Renfield into the confines of a straight jacket, Van Helsing mentally retracted his theory that the fly-eating madman had attacked Lucy. There was something else out there in the darkness. Something far more sinister.

 That night they hear a wolf howling again, sharp and thunderous in the distance. Renfield howls back at it. 

**Author's Note:**

> Dracula (1931) is one of my favorite films and I've been working on this for quite some time, and, for whatever reason, I suddenly had the inspiration to finish and post it. The prose is a little different from my usual writing, as I tired to invoke some of the feeling of Stoker's original text in terms of word choice. I loved writing Renfield, he's an interesting character to get into the head of. Any critique or feedback would be lovely!


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